The identity of Bitcoin's inventor is shrouded in mystery, but the makers of a new HBO documentary believe they may have revealed the man's identity.
Karen Hoback believes she may have discovered the alias Bitcoin's inventor used online: Satoshi Nakamoto. The inventor of Bitcoin may have personal control over a stash of cryptocurrencies worth tens of billions of dollars, according to the Washington Post.
His documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” premiered on HBO on Tuesday.
Hoback suggests that the real Nakamoto is not a programming expert or criminal mastermind, but Peter Todd, a developer from Canada who would have been a university student when the cryptocurrency was created.
Although the filmmakers do not present any incontrovertible evidence linking Todd to the Satoshi Nakamoto alias in the documentary, they piece together interesting coincidences and forum posts to confirm that Todd is the person. He argues that there is a high possibility.
“We have a very strong case,” Hoback told The Washington Post. “And ultimately, we want to leave it up to the audience to draw their own conclusions.”
Todd denied inventing Bitcoin and said the investigation into Hoback and others trying to uncover the identity of Bitcoin's founder should be closed.
“This question is not only stupid, it's dangerous,” Todd told The Washington Post. “Satoshi clearly didn't want to be found, but for good reason, and no one should help people try to find him.”
According to the Washington Post, Nakamoto would be extremely wealthy if he still had access to the roughly 1 million bitcoins he acquired in the early days of cryptocurrencies, worth about $65 billion. If the price of Bitcoin continues to rise, Nakamoto could become even richer, which is why it's important to reveal his identity, Hoback said.
“They are on track to eventually become the richest people on the planet,” Hoback said.
Todd told the Washington Post that because of Nakamoto's potential wealth, Hoback's claims that he is the inventor of Bitcoin could make him a target for kidnappers and other criminals. He said there is. Todd said she was traveling to escape potential danger ahead of the documentary's release.
“Falsely claiming that ordinary people with average wealth are extremely wealthy exposes them to threats such as robbery and kidnapping,” Todd said.
The evidence that Hoback cited as his “smoking gun” dates back to the early days of the cryptocurrency, when Todd and Nakamoto discussed it on the Bitcoin Forum in 2010.
In his first post, Nakamoto details the solutions to the complex problems Bitcoin was facing. Todd, who joined the forum a few days ago and would later claim he knew little about Bitcoin until years later, responded about 90 minutes later to correct Bitcoin's inventorship.
“Of course, to be specific, inputs and outputs cannot match *exactly* if the second trade incurs a transaction fee,” Todd told Nakamoto.
Based on the post, Hoback concluded that Todd did not intend to write back to Nakamoto. Mr. Hoback said Todd may have been confusing his two accounts on the forum by switching aliases, and may have intended the corrections under Todd's name to be under Nakamoto's name. said.
“Is he reacting or is he continuing to think?” Hoback asks in the documentary.
A few days after the forum exchange, Mr. Nakamoto stopped posting online altogether, and Mr. Todd disappeared from the forums for several years.
Hoback also noted that while many of the other Nakamoto candidates were professional programmers, the inventor's coding was said to be amateurish, which is consistent with Todd's background at the time.
Nakamoto wrote more about Bitcoin over the summer, suggesting that his true profession follows an academic calendar.
Bitcoin's inventor also uses British spelling for the word, which Hoback says would make sense given Todd's Canadian background.
Other journalists have previously attempted to solve the mystery of Bitcoin's inventor's identity, but many have been debunked or elusive.
